Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Reid holds a small lead

When PPP last polled the Nevada Senate race in July Harry Reid was ahead by 2 points. Fast forward 3 months and nothing has changed. Reid leads Sharron Angle 47-45 with minor candidates and none of the above combining for 7% and only 1% of voters still undecided.

Reid continues to be unpopular with 44% of voters approving of him and 52% disapproving. Feelings toward him are pretty much completely polarized along party lines with 83% of Democrats giving him good marks and 88% of Republicans unhappy with the job he's doing. Independents split against him by a 34/61 margin.

Although Reid's approval numbers are bad he's come a long way since PPP's first Nevada poll of the cycle, back in January, which found him at a 36/58 spread. The arena of a campaign has caused Democrats to warm up to him considerably and although his 34% favor with independents is bad it's actually up 10 points from 24% at the start of the year.

Nevada voters like Angle even less than they like Reid. Her favorability is 41/53. Her numbers with independents are a lot better than her opponent's, at 50/46. But 22% of Republicans view Angle negatively, indicating a much higher degree of reservation about her within her own party than Reid sees in his.

Reid is winning over 85% of Democrats while Angle is getting just 83% of Republicans. In 90% of races across the country this year Republicans are more unified than Democrats but this is the rare exception and it's the biggest reason why Reid is still clinging to a lead. Angle is ahead 48-40 with independents but given Reid's -27 approval spread with them it ought to be a lot more and it's another reminder that Republican primary voters may have bailed out Reid.

The combination of Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian and 'none of the above' on the Nevada ballot may be one of the most overplayed political stories of 2010. Each is getting only 2% on our poll. In addition to polling the full ballot we also asked a head to head Reid/Angle question. On that measure folks who had supported someone other than Angle or Reid on the full ballot supported Angle by only a 33-32 margin. So the presence of all those other things on the ballot is basically a wash despite all the ink that has been devoted to it.

Reid's small lead comes with a projected electorate that voted for Barack Obama by only 2 points in 2008, in contrast to his actual 12 point victory in the state. That's one of the largest enthusiasm gaps we're seeing anywhere in the country and if Democratic interest in the election picks up down the stretch Reid could see his lead expand to a more comfortable margin. If that doesn't change this is bound to be one of the closest races in the country on election night.

This is quite a conservative estimate... LITERALLY! I see you only have 41% Dems and 40% GOP, with 19% Indies and others. In Public Opinion Strategies' poll for the Retail Association of Nevada released last month, they had 42% Dems, 37% GOP, and 21% Indies and others (exactly reflecting current voter registration numbers, and their top lines were 45% Reid & 40% Angle). And I see in this model, men slightly outnumber women. So if anything, I see this more as "worst case scenario" for Dems than any kind of "rosy picture".

The NV Democratic Party has a VERY STRONG field operation, while the NV GOP is flailing and hoping for Karl Rove to bail them out. If anything, you may be proven right with your own admission that many of the public polls are underestimating Dem strength here.

As I mentioned yesterday, this is one of those places where the new 2008 voters who came to the polls for Obama just don't have a lot to get excited about.

Reid isn't good on jobs, isn't good on the economy, criticized Obama for slamming Vegas vacations, said Obama could deploy a "negro" accent when he wanted to, didn't show up to his own apology breakfast for that comment, and all the while was gaffe-prone and unlikable majority leader.

I don't see how unenthused Obama voters suddenly decide they need to save Reid.

This poll takes a lot of questions about DannyTark. Some votes are bound to like him better than either Angle or Reid..and by reminding DannyTark in the questions, some of the soft Angle voters may have a different response. The whole DannyTark will do better than Angle is highly speculative..Even Mother Teresa's approval ratings will come down after millions of dirty ads from team Reid. Bottomline, millions of dollars of ads spent by Reid, Angle is at worst being 2 pts behind in the poll (and ahead in many others by similar margin). Another recall how Jon Corzine outspent Christie via negative ads and Christie was either tie or slight ahead in Oct 2009. Who would have thought team Angle could raise 14 Million dollars last qtr...the only other senate candidate that raised that much money in such a short time was Candidate Scott Brown in Jan 2010. This red tsnumai is building, no receding, regardless of wishful thinking otherwise. Even John Dingell has to run an attack ad...and Barney Frank needs the help of Bill Clinton in Mass.

Angle is going to get a big lift with Republicans from Sandoval's campaign. He's going to get 55+% so that is a lot of GOP leaning voters that papa Reid needs to get to vote against Angle.

I think you'll see a lot more GOP voters "hold their nose" for Angle after voting FOR Sandoval. Reid is stuck at 47% and has no help elsewhere on the ballot, he needs to get Dems to actually come out and vote for him and the track record so far says that won't happen. Final margin is Angle 50-48.

Actually no, Eric, Sandoval won't be helping Angle. He's running AWAY from her, and many of his top supporters, like State Senate GOP Leader Bill Raggio, are Republicans for REID. Sandoval's and Raggio's wing of the party HATES Angle passionately because she was so problematic for them in the state legislature. That's why Raggio, along with other prominent GOPers in the state like the late Governor Kenny Guinn's widow Dema and Former NV First Lady Dawn Gibbons have endorsed Harry Reid. They know which way their bread is buttered, and they know Reid has done plenty for this state (stopping Yucca Mountain, bringing in green jobs projects, supporting tourism, etc.).

And wt, what I've seen from Dems here is that the faux "scandal" from early this year is long gone. The only ones still raging mad about it are righties that weren't planning to vote for Reid anyway. Reid encouraged Obama to run for President and praised him as a candidate, so it's ridiculous to assume he's a "racist".

I'm not really getting the numbers from this poll. On top of it being only 504 likely which is a very small sample, the spread of Dem, Rep, Ind also seems a bit off. I checked the count of the primary vote and there were 60k more voters in the Republican primary than the Dem primary. Both races were contested. I think the voter enthusiasm of 10% is off and is more like 25% more for Republicans this year. Nearly every single primary this year has seen 50% more Republican voters show up than Dems. Even in non-contested Republican races that happened.

This round of polling by PPP in many races (like WV) are weighted too much to Democrats causing the results to be outliers to all the other polls that just came out. I'll pass this round and see what shows up next week.

I feel very sorry for Nevada if Angle wins that election. Very, very sorry indeed. But, I think it's very telling that even her own party doesn't seem to want much to do with her. Nevada regressives seem to have at least some sense when it comes to that.

Not really. We try to get 600 if we can, but in some states, particularly ones with large minority populations, and especially when the likely voter screen is applied, we can't always reach that threshold. Even so, 504 respondents gives you a 4.4% margin of error, which is not too shabby.

"Sharron Angle by 10+ come November. Voter turnout in Nevada's primaries favored the Republican voters by a 60% margin. I fully expect the gap to be even higher on November 2nd."

HAHA! It doesn't work that way. There were no competitive primaries on the D side. Sure, there's more energy on the R side, but that's already being reflected in our polls. The Tea Party has been really ginning up primary turnout this year more than any party has for a primary in a long time. But there are significantly more Ds who didn't vote in foregone-conclusion primaries who will turn out in the general than there are Rs.

"What poll, may I ask, did you get those rather ridiculous numbers from? R2K for moveon.org maybe?"

If Sandoval or anyone else actively supports Angle is irrelevant, by getting their voters to come vote they are providing a huge advantage to her whether they want to or not.

Some percentage of Sandoval voters with either vote for Reid, some other candidate or not vote at all in the Senate race, but the majority of voters who vote for Sandoval will vote for Angle too and this provides just the boost she needs to overcome her own shortcomings that are keeping her from taking full advantage of Reid's shortcomings.

"If Sandoval or anyone else actively supports Angle is irrelevant, by getting their voters to come vote they are providing a huge advantage to her whether they want to or not."

So are you about to admit Sandoval's providing Angle with little to no advantage then? The only evidence of any Sandoval campaign I see here in Nevada is the occasional TV ad. And occasionally a yard sign or two around town. That's it. No field campaign that I can see anywhere. Inconsistent TV buys. No public appearances. Sandoval is pretty much taking the Governor's race for granted.

That's why I suspect it won't be as much as a blowout as some pollsters have shown, and why I seriously doubt his presence on the ballot will do anything for Angle. He doesn't so much as mention her name these days in the rare instance he is caught on camera. And again, many of his top surrogates, like Bill Raggio, have pretty much given their blessing for moderate and paleo-conservative R's to split the ticket for Harry Reid and Sandoval.

"According to the Florida Division of Elections, voter turnout in the 2010 PRIMARY elections were 50% higher than that of the 2006 MID-TERMS."

That can't be true. I just checked, and 1.294 million voters cast ballots in the GOP gubernatorial primary this year, an impressive number. But at least 4.7 million cast ballots in the general Senate election in 2006.